Hannover Messe: The Chancellor of Germany and the Norwegian Prime Minister visit Rittal and Eplan

Industry is in the midst of a transformation: Digitalisation, the energy transition and sustainability must be achieved. What it takes to do this: Large-scale, quick and efficient infrastructure expansion thanks to standardisation. Rittal and Eplan have now shown German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre live and in colour at the Hannover Messe that this calls for a rethink and the companies explained how this can work. It would no longer be possible to solve the major challenges through individual products or companies but through fully integrated and optimised value-added processes — from panel building and switchgear manufacturing to smart production.

Herborn, 23 April 2024 – Chancellor Scholz was visibly impressed as he walked around the Eplan and Rittal exhibition stand. Welcomed by Prof. Friedhelm Loh, owner and CEO of the Friedhelm Loh Group, and Markus Asch, CEO of Rittal International and Rittal Software Systems, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre made themselves familiar with the wide range of products and services offered by the innovation leaders. The companies impressively showed how to master the major transformation processes in industry by combining software and hardware and through consistent standardisation.

Markus Asch made it clear: “The transformation of industry now requires, above all, a rapid and efficient expansion of the infrastructure, even though capacities and expertise are limited.” Standards and consistent data, available across the entire value chain, were the key. Eplan, Rittal and Rittal Automation Systems are specialists in this field: “With Eplan software, our customers in panel building and switchgear manufacturing can create a complete digital twin of an enclosure right at the beginning of the process, including all the components installed within it. This data is then available throughout the rest of the process, from design and engineering to manufacturing and machining to operation.” This makes the process up to 85% faster and more efficient, either through automation or even via software-assisted handling, which even untrained specialists can carry out, such as “lawyers, for example,” as the Chancellor (and law graduate) added with a smile.

What was experienced here in practice using the example of panel building and switchgear manufacturing is also a principle of action for the entire industry, right down to the smart factory: “You can only optimise if you create transparency throughout all processes. If you make energy consumption transparent and correlate it with the manufacturing processes, you can produce much more energy-efficiently and establish the conditions for sustainability reporting,” the CEO added. Digitalisation is, therefore, a decisive lever for the energy transition, and sustainability is the framework for shaping digitalisation.

The integrated technological expertise of Rittal and Eplan with their sister companies Cideon and German Edge Cloud, which ranges from product design, and plant and mechanical engineering to digitisation in manufacturing, shows how digitisation can also be achieved across sectors and ecosystems.

“Thank you very much for visiting us at our booth,” said owner Professor Loh as the visit came to an end: “We wanted to show that the companies in the industry are enablers, especially in times like these.”